Thought for a second I got banned for something lol
Me too and I was wondering what I did!
Readit Newsverzali commented on Tell HN: HN was down · Posted by u/uyzstvqs
verzali commented on Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers andrewmccalip.com/space-d... · Posted by u/flinner
My understanding was that anything at ~500km needed readjustments every few months in order to not come down. Much less than 2-3 years.
I'd be interested to know what the average lifespan or failure rate of Starlink has been. That's good that some are still up there 6+ years later, but I know many aren't. I'm not sure how many of those ran out of fuel, had hardware failures, or were simply obsolete, but an AFR would be interesting to see.
The atmosphere is still thick enough to drag you down at 500km. You would last typically last a few years before burning up - the rate of fall is pretty low at 500km. But you do need fuel to do collision avoidance manoeuvres and for attitude control (otherwise your panels will no longer face the Sun and your antennas will not face the ground).
verzali commented on Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers andrewmccalip.com/space-d... · Posted by u/flinner
Here's some math on how affordable that abundant LEO solar energy is:
First you have to pay energy to get to LEO
A Starship Launch costs[0] 51.75 TJ of energy in terms of its methane fuel.
It will be able to take a payload of 150 tonnes or 331,000 pounds[1].
How many computers is that?
One online estimate says a computer weights 80 lbs or 35 kg.
So 150000 kg / 35 kg/computer = approximately 4285 computers that we can launch into orbit per Starship.
51.75TJ / 4285 computers = approximately 12.08 GJ per computer to place it in orbit.
Let's say each computer is a H200 and consumes 700 watts continuously. How long would it need to run in orbit before it used as much energy for computation as it took to launch it?
12.08 GJ / 700 W = 12,080,000,000 J / 700 J/s = approximately 17,257,143 seconds.
Or about 6.5 months to break even on energy.
That sounds pretty good, except my estimate for the weight of each compute unit and associated power system & cooling etc. are probably underestimates by one or two orders of magnitude. In which case you'd be looking at 5 to 50 years to break even on energy, by which time the chips are obsolete and need to be replaced anyway.
[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/66480/how-much-ene... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship#Description
You are just launching computers, with no propulsion, no attitude control, no solar panels, no radio/laser systems, no radiators. So all of that will take mass away from the computing power. A starlink satellite already weighs about 1000kg, and that really is just the supporting infrastructure you need before you start adding computers...
So yes, 10-100x extra is probably reasonable.
Why contribute if you have nothing to say? What even is this reply?
It could be a hard problem, no?
All republics are democracies. Not all democracies are republics. Some people seem to get confused about this and think that "democracy" means "direct democracy" only, and not any of the various sorts of indirect democracy.
Even the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?
verzali commented on Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products windowscentral.com/artifi... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
I've always suspected Microsoft is a front for an ineffable cosmic evil that is trying to crush the human spirit into bewildered, abject despair.
How else do you explain Teams and the Hotmail UI?
That would certainly explain the Loop UI
verzali commented on I wasted years of my life in crypto twitter.com/kenchangh/sta... · Posted by u/Anon84
Pretty much. People say it's meant to replace laws and regulations, but if it's successful then it won't.
The US has a large bitcoin strategic reserve. Banks offer bitcoin accounts (in some countries). You can get a loan backed by your bitcoin.
We're not yet at the point where you can get a credit card and 60 year home loan denominated in bitcoin, with the fed writing bonds or even issuing fiat to stabilise rates, but if it was more popular then is there any technical reason we couldn't get there?
What purpose does a bitcoin strategic reserve serve?
verzali commented on I Think I Found Something Weird About Physical Constants quantummarmelade.substack... · Posted by u/obius_prime
Is this something that you have generated with Grok? Have you spent some time yourself to study the math and physics of vibrations and waves before publishing this?
verzali commented on Datacenters in space aren't going to work taranis.ie/datacenters-in... · Posted by u/mindracer
Maintenance will be impossible or at least prohibitively expensive. Which means your only opex is ground support. But it also means your capex depreciates over whatever lifetime these things will have with zero repairs or preventive maintenance.
But ground support will not be cheap. You need to transfer a huge amount of data, which means you need to run and maintain a network of ground stations. And satellite operations are not as cheap as people like to think either.
verzali commented on Datacenters in space aren't going to work taranis.ie/datacenters-in... · Posted by u/mindracer
Antisatellite weapons are expensive and rare, and also woefully inadequate for dealing with megaconstellations.
If there's one large orbital datacenter, then sure, ASAT is a threat to it. But if it's a dispersed swarm like the Starlink system?
Good luck making a dent in that. You'd run out of ASAT long before Musk runs out of Starlink.
You only need to destroy a few. Then you have a cloud of debris that will take down the rest or at the very least force them to use all their fuel making evasive manoeuvres.